The Story of How I Broke My Left Ankle

YO, BLOGGERS!

So, in my last post on this blog I mentioned a “broken ankle” story. Now is the time you get to read about how I broke it!

Exciting, I know…

Honestly, today I just feel like blogging. No reason. However, since you might want a story instead of my random ramblings, I am happy to share a piece of my own history.

Who knows? Maybe through these posts of mine, you may actually get to know me a little better.

The Story of How I Broke My Left Ankle:

Once upon a time in a land not-so-far away, (Montague County, TX. Pronounced MON-TAY-G. Not to be confused with the Shakespearean MON-TE-GUE.) a family of five who lived on a farm with 11.4 acres got a trampoline. For the children who lived on the Hawkins farm, this was the most magical thing they had ever owned! Of course, they had seen this type of contraption before, but never had they had unlimited access to something so magnificent.

The two boys loved to bounce up and down, doing all sorts of flips and somersaults and everything else under the sun that can be done on a trampoline! What fun they had!

When their mother called them in for dinner, they were reluctant to leave their joy bringing gift, but alas, they obeyed.

Now, these boys weren’t the only children in the house at that time. There also lived a little girl who was much younger than her two brothers. While she also thought that the trampoline was a magical thing, she was also quite afraid of the magnitude of elasticity that it possessed. She saw that the power behind it could be far too much for her little body to handle. When she was allowed outside to play with the boys, she was careful to not go too close to the middle when they were jumping so high, or when they were performing tricks. When she felt comfortable, she would only bounce straight up and down so that she would not fall over the edge. Each night, the children would come back inside for dinner and to get cleaned up for bed.

One Sunday night, the little girl went outside with one of her brothers to play. This brother was more careful with his little sister, so she felt confidant to maybe jump a little higher this time. She jumped up! And down! And back up! and back down again! And once more she jumped up! To her horror, as she was in the air, she heard an awful crack and felt her ankle twist. With a sharp cry of pain, she fell back down, making sure she landed on her back without her ankle hitting anything. She screamed and cried, until finally her parents came rushing out of the house to see what had happened. When they brought her inside with tears pouring out of her eyes, she pointed at her ankle. What her parents and brothers saw was that her ankle had swelled up to the size of a grapefruit! (Now, this was the ankle of a little nine year old girl.) Worried of what might have happened to her bones, they rushed her to the hospital to get an x-ray of the damage.

At the hospital, her ankle (which was throbbing with pain) was put on the cold x-ray table, which felt like pure torture. Afterward, they placed her foot in a boot and told her parents that it was a mere sprain.

While this little girl had never had a sprain or broken bone of any sort, she just knew that something was wrong. There was too much pain taking over her ankle for it to only be a sprain.

Set up with a walker and a soft cast to protect her ankle, the doctor suggested she begin physical therapy so that she would not lose the use of her foot. The pain was too much to bare, but she tried. Every time she stood on her left foot, she felt much too tired the next day.

One day she woke up from one of her long naps and had made the decision to start walking. “It’s going to be really hard,” she thought. “but I know I can do it!” As she began walking out of her room with her walker, her oldest brother yelled at her not to walk on her foot! “But the doctor said…” She began, but her brother stopped her and told her to go back to bed. Too tired from the few steps she took to argue, she crawled back to her bed and fell asleep once again.

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What she did not know then, but knows now, is that the radiologist had misread the x-ray. Instead of a mere sprain, she had a Salter-Harris type III fracture. Had the bone broken any more, then her growth plate would have been damaged.

The podiatrist that her parents took her to set her up with a nice light blue hard cast. She felt so much safer after her ankle was protected. Because she was so weak, instead of using crutches, she used a wheelchair.

The happy ending to this story is that her ankle finally healed and the cast was removed eight weeks later. During the time she was in the wheelchair and cast, the family took a trip to Disney Land with the father’s younger brother’s family and the little girl got to go on all the rides first! Aladdin told her that she could be Ariel’s little sister! She also met Princess Ariel herself (Which the little girl KNEW was not the real Ariel, because she could see the thread sewing her crown into her hair…) and that was one of the best moments ever! She even got to have a special signature from Tinkerbell! (Needless to say, that was a fun week.)

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This story was all from my own memory of what happened, of course. My brothers- who were 13 and 16 at the time- might have had different views of what happened and on how cool the trampoline was.

Since then I have sprained the same ankle about three times. The first time I sprained it, I was in another wheelchair for a month or so, then the other times I was strong enough to use crutches. It has been quite a few years (4 or 5) since the last time I sprained it, so hopefully all of that mess is over. 🙂

Moral of the story?

Simple: It doesn’t matter WHAT you do on a trampoline, you can still hurt yourself badly.

Also, if you do end up with a broken ankle and in a wheelchair (AND you have redhair), YOU could be related to Ariel…
That’s all for now. I might come up with some other story to tell you next time… Perhaps about how the Nerd’s club was formed, my (brief) adventures with public school, the time I was a mom (it was a play!), the time I was told I was a mom (the joys of babysitting), or even that one time I went to Six Flags Over Texas and some random dude sat on me. ON PURPOSE.

Much love to you all!

If you have a trampoline, DON’T DIE!!!!!!

Savannah

P.S… I’m not afraid of trampolines any more, but I am still weary of them. Don’t judge!